Spoilsports
by Katharine Frost
Summary: Freya and Amarant find an unusual common ground: they do NOT want to go swimming. Set during the game.


> Yes – more fiction featuring Freya and Amarant! I'm a one-trick pony – it's so desperate. Standard disclaimers apply, of course.
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> **.....**
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> **Spoilsports  
**A Katharine Frost Production
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> **.....**
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> The little babbling stream had proven irresistible to Zidane and the rest, much to Freya's chagrin. She sat alone on the rocky face looking down at the lovely water, perched on her shucked-off red coat, distastefully watching them all swim. Really, it was such an _odd_ habit people had – wanting to soak themselves in water and splash one another. Even little Vivi was nervously dipping his booted foot into the weak current.   
  
It was the sort of the day she hated – the sort of day that had become all too frequent on the journey. Hot and muggy, with the brilliant sun beating down on her and not a thread of a cloud in sight to ease the irritation. It made her long for Burmecia, cool rain falling on her face and icy wind rustling through her hair. Below her, her companions laughed and played, oblivious to her discomfort.   
  
A very large, gangly-shaped shadow fell over her, and she didn't need to turn around to know it was Amarant, their most recent acquisition, and their most quiet. She had forgotten all about him. He had the habit of lagging behind them all as they travelled, looking silent and scowly and altogether unlike someone she would want to talk to.   
  
"Fools," he growled. "I thought we were supposed to be doing more important things."   
  
She was inclined to agree with him, as horrible as that was. She craned her head back to look up at him, but of course all she could see was clothes and leathery skin and the bottom of a bearded chin disappearing under a rather frightening mane of wormy-looking hair. This was the first time they had spoken – except for necessary shouts to one another in battle – since trying to fight one another in Alexandria; she wondered if it meant he had decided to stop wanting to tear her to pieces.   
  
"I did, too," she said cautiously, wondering if she really did want to be in his good books. It hardly mattered as long as he kept clawing through monsters for them; still, the prospect of a real conversation with their resident silent-type was mildly interesting as a distraction on a humid day.   
  
"You playing the loner today?" he asked.   
  
"I dislike sunshine," she said simply. "And swimming."   
  
"You just went up about five points."   
  
"Pardon?"   
  
"Never mind."   
  
And to her great surprise, he plunked himself down beside her, stretching out his huge legs on the rock. He really was a terribly beastly and awkward-looking thing, as though he were a mishmash of several different creatures all in one. She'd never seen anything quite like him, and she'd been all around the world, but she didn't dare ask anything about that. Feeling as though she should say something, she commented, "We don't particularly like getting wet – Burmecians, I mean."   
  
"Then why do you live in such a rainy place?"   
  
"Well, rain is entirely different. It's not like getting soaked through the fur." She tried to look at him surreptitiously; as far as she could tell, he was watching the others swim. It was hard to see under all that bizarre hair. "And you don't want to join in?" she asked, feeling instantly stupid.   
  
"You may have noticed that I'm not precisely the community type."   
  
"I might never have guessed," she said dryly. It startled a small chuckle out of him; she decided she liked the sound, rough and croaky, as though the chords which produced his laughter were sorely in need of exercise.   
  
"And I don't care for swimming or sunshine either."   
  
"Why not?"   
  
"Too damn cheerful."   
  
"Ah." She suppressed a smile, and reached up to adjust her hat, both to shade her face and hide the expression on it. "Wastelands at midnight more your cup of tea, then?"   
  
"Something like that."   
  
They both paused to watch Zidane, who had latched his tail onto a tree branch and was swinging back and forth, his hands and hair skirting the shallow water. It was awkward, but it wasn't the worst silence Freya had ever endured, even with the lazy, unbearable heat, and she even chuckled a little herself at the derisive snort that came from Amarant after Steiner stumbled and fell backwards into the water.   
  
"Burmecians don't particularly approve of leisure when there's work to be done," she said suddenly. She didn't know why she bothered talking to him, but he was a good listener in that he just sat there and took it, even though she wasn't entirely sure he was hearing her. "It goes against the honour of dragoons, you see. Fun is only for when there are no battles to be fought."   
  
"How dreary."   
  
"I don't see what's so _dreary_ about responsibility." And as soon as the words came out, she gave a small ironic laugh and clapped her claw over her mouth. "Hold on, I take that back – I sound like my old training teacher."   
  
"Nothing wrong with a little laziness," he said sagely. "Only I know how to spend my sloth-time better than those fools." With that, he stretched back on the rock, looking even larger and scalier than before.   
  
"Hmph." Napping was the sort of thing that had been wholeheartedly discouraged in Burmecia. It was the height of laziness – sleeping during the day! Still, she was tired from long days of hiking and fighting monsters, and, really, there was nothing better to do until everyone else decided to get back on track.   
  
Freya stretched out alongside him, using her hat to cover her face and ears. Perhaps it would pass the time better, and make the blazing sun more tolerable.   
  
Amarant's voice sounded beside her, grumbly but amused. "I thought Burmecians didn't particularly approve of leisure."   
  
"I'm not in Burmecia today," she said from beneath the hat – which elicited another of those fascinating chuckles. "And it's not terribly bad – it certainly takes one's mind off the sun."   
  
"Such excuses."   
  
"Hush," she said teasingly, feeling abruptly light. "I'm trying to sleep."   
  
But Zidane and Dagger and the rest had finished and were clambering up the rocky face to greet her. She stood up, her hat falling aside, her sticky-hot hair clinging to her face. Amarant sighed loudly and got up himself, grunting all the while.   
  
"You don't enjoy swimming?" Dagger asked, wringing out her hair.   
  
"Ah, don't mind them," Zidane said. "Just a couple of spoilsports, those two."   
  
Freya would have protested at this unkind assessment – except that, from where she was standing, she saw something very interesting. Under the fall of his bright hair, where he presumably thought he was safe from the prying eyes of inquisitive dragoons, Amarant Coral was smirking.


End file.
